World News - Bomb Scare Closes Wash. State Ferry Dock; Boy Admits It Was Homemade Toy Lost in the Water

A ferry dock was closed for several hours while authorities investigated a device that looked like a bomb but turned out to be a child's homemade toy with plastic pipes, a sheriff's spokesman said. Police used a remote-controlled robot to examine the device, found jammed under a walkway leading to the dock Thursday afternoon, sheriff's spokesman Ed Troyer said. As they were investigating, Troyer said, a woman brought her son to the dock to explain what it was and how the toy had been lost in the water. It apparently floated to the dock and became stuck under the walkway, Troyer said. The scare disrupted ferry and nearby railroad service for about four hours. Burlington Northern Santa Fe spokesman Gus Melonas said eight trains were held back as a precaution. ... http://abcnews.go.com

Two hikers lost in the dense jungle of French Guiana for weeks survived by eating the only things at hand: beetles and other insects, frogs and spiders.The French hikers, Guilhem Nayral and Loic Pillois, were found on Thursday, French authorities said.They had left Feb. 14 for a hike from the Grand Kanori rapids on the river Approuague to the tiny village of Saul. Their families alerted authorities on Feb. 28, two days after they were scheduled to arrive."After 12 days, we hadn't arrived in Saul. We thought that someone would come looking for us, so we stopped. We waited for three weeks in the same place. We heard helicopters pass, and we figured that we had to make ourselves seen. So we cut down trees to make a fire," Pillois told reporters, according to RFO television."We ate palm seeds, we drank water because we always had a river next to us, where we washed. We also trapped insects and beetles. We ate frogs and tarantulas."...http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,264530,00.html

Taleban fighters have seized local government offices in Afghanistan's south-eastern province of Zabul. A local spokesman said police in Khan Afghan district had withdrawn because they did not have enough ammunition. Meanwhile, in Helmand province the Taleban are reported to have been forced out of the town of Sangin by Nato and Afghan troops. President Hamid Karzai says his government has been having meetings with the Taleban for "a long time". In fresh violence on Friday, a suicide bomber has killed six people near parliament in the capital, Kabul. Serious damage The Taleban have been forced out of the town of Sangin in Helmand province, the governor of Helmand told the BBC. ...http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6532085.stm

State police captured a third bank robbery suspect Friday connected to the deadly shooting of an FBI agent who had been tracking the men.The agent's team had fired on the armed suspects outside a bank branch in Readington on Thursday, but the FBI said the suspects did not shoot back and the agent may have accidentally been killed by one of his own colleagues."Preliminarily, information suggests the agent may have been fatally wounded as a result of the accidental discharge of another agent's weapon during a dynamic arrest situation," the FBI said in a statement released Thursday night.Two of the robbery suspects were captured shortly after the shooting. The third fled on foot and was arrested Friday morning in Branchburg, within a couple miles of the bank, State Police Lt. Gerald Lewis said....http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,264504,00.html

Contaminants that led to a massive recall of pet food could have been added intentionally, according to one theory being considered by the Food and Drug Administration."Somebody may have added melamine to the wheat gluten in order to increase what appears to be the protein level," the FDA's Stephen Sundlof told CNN on Friday. "Wheat gluten is a high-protein substance and by trying to artificially inflate the protein level, it could command a higher price. But that's just one theory at this point."Sundlof said the agency is virtually sure the animal deaths linked to tainted pet food were caused by something that contaminated the wheat gluten, a normal ingredient of the food.The FDA has found melamine, a component of fertilizers and plastic utensils, in the gluten, but that may not be the culprit, said Sundlof, director of the FDA's Center for Veterinary Medicine....http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/06/pet.deaths/index.html?eref=rss_us

Dubai, the Middle East's fastest- growing city, is running out of office space, according to the commercial property broker CB Richard Ellis Group Inc. The lack of space is making it more difficult for foreign companies to profit from the sheikdom's economic boom, said Nicholas Maclean, managing director of the firm's business in the region. Some U.S. companies have agreed to occupy premises that won't be built for two years, he said. ``There's a desperate shortage,'' Maclean said in an interview. In some cases, companies are ``running their operations from other locations until the space eases up'' in Dubai, the most noted of the seven emirates that make up the U.A.E. The United Arab Emirates economy, the Arab world's second- biggest after Saudi Arabia, grew 8.9 percent in 2006 as the country earned an average of $65 per barrel of oil, about 22 percent higher than the previous year. That's helped draw in companies such as Baker Hughes Inc. to Dubai, ...http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aAu7rArkl91w&refer=exclusive